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San Diego Union-Tribune, Feature >>
Hooked On Afropop
Chris Berry's first encounter with the music 'changed my life'
By Andrew Gilbert
By any measure, Northern California-raised Chris Berry has taken a wild musical ride. A teenage obsession with African music and dance led him to Congo, where he found himself studying percussion in remote villages with tribal masters. A recurring dream about the mbira (thumb piano) took him from central Africa to Zimbabwe in the early 1990s. After several years of apprenticeship on the instrument, he recorded an album that became a hit across the continent's south.
Now based in New York City, Berry released his first U.S. album last year, an ebullient Afropop session, "Dancemaker" (Wrasse Records), showcasing his Pan-African ensemble Panjea. He makes his San Diego-area debut Monday at the Belly Up with Panjea, featuring String Cheese Incident's Michael Kang on violin and mandolin. The Grateful Dead tribute band Kleclric Wasteland opens the show.
Playing mbira and belting out vocals in English and Shona, Berry is a passionate, kinetic performer. His socially conscious lyrics bear uplifting messages that occasionally lapse into bumper-sticker sentiment. His music's focus on the need for healing and the futility of violence stems from his firsthand experience watching a nation fall apart.
"I was in Zimbabwe when there was so much hope and promise," Berry said. "It's so drastic the disaster that's occurred, and the government refuses to take any responsibility."
With the government's collapse of legitimacy following a rigged election, spiraling inflation, food shortages and the suppression of independent journalists, Zimbabwe has become a basket case.
Berry had created an organization (also called Panjea) that launched several community development projects. But when he tried to go back to Zimbabwe last year, Robert Mugabe's government-controlled press labeled Berry as an imperialist villain.
"I have so many friends and family back there who I can't see," Berry said. "If I would have gone back this time they would have killed me, just to make an example."
Berry traces his fascination with African music to his youth in Sebas- topol, about 55 miles north of San Francisco. The son of children's author Joy Berry (the woman behind the popular "Let's Talk About" series), he and some others shoplifted cassettes from a record store. The booty included a copy of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat classic "Black President."
"I had never heard anything like that in my life," Berry said. "It blew my mind and changed my life."
A few days later, he saw a poster for an African dance class led by Titos Sompa, a Congolese master drummer. Berry studied with Sompa throughout junior high and high school, and joined Sompa on trip to Congo (not the much larger, war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire).
It wasn't long before Berry's dreams of the mbira led him to Zimbabwe.
"I got pretty proficient on mbira, but I was a better singer at first, so I became vocalist for this Thomas Mapfumo-type band with a mixture of traditional music and Western instruments," Berry said, referring the outspoken Zimbabwean musician who now lives in exile in Portland, Ore. "We entered and won a Zimbabwean version 'Star Search,' and from that we got record deal, which launched my whole career in Zimbabwe."
The band's video of its hit song about the destructive power of greed (translated from Shona, the title is "Money Is Darkness") played on television nightly. But even with its vast popularity, the band struggled to make ends meet.
Berry tried to get U.S. promoters interested in Panjea, but never made any inroads while he was living in Harare. With the release of "Dancemakers," Berry is finally bringing his messages to the West, and longing to return to the country that needs him most. 05/18/06
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